Monday, 21 May 2012

Boards and Sticks with Frame

This 2010 Gregory Benedetti design is effectively two
puzzles in one: the boards and sticks combine to form a level 9 burr, and if
you build the same burr inside the confines of the frame, it rises to a level
12 burr in a frame.

Eric Fuller made a run of these puzzles about a year ago and
I was a bit slow off the mark and didn’t manage to pick one up when they were
first offered. Fortunately for me, one of my puzzle-buddies was quicker off the
mark than I was and a couple of weeks ago he was thinning out his collection in
favour of some new glass for his other hobby, so I took it off his hands.

It’s an interesting design given that there are two shapes
of pieces (boards and sticks!) and there are six identical copies of each, with
the sticks made of Leopardwood and the boards made of Bubinga – they fit inside
the Wenge frame that Eric has taken a lot of trouble to reinforce – making for
a nice, sturdy frame that you won’t be afraid you’ll break. All of the joints
on the boards are shouldered as well. As usual, one of the pieces has Eric’s
signature and the date on it.

As you might expect from a level 12 burr, disassembly is decidedly
non-trivial and the first time I took it apart I managed to ties myself in all
sorts of weird and wonderful knots with bits hanging out all over the place
before I finally managed to extract my first piece – and it didn’t exactly get
much easier from there on either... the extra space in the frame after the
first piece is removed seems to vanish and things don’t really get any easier
until the next piece or two are removed ... then things loosen up a bit and it’s
plain sailing to the end.

Reassembly is something else altogether – the ‘boards’ aren’t
really boards at all – more like wide, spindly u-shaped pieces and they are
wont to twist and swivel when you’re trying to get things neatly aligned during
the assembly process. Things tighten up a bit as you get more and more pieces
loaded into the frame until they’re pretty much forced into the right
orientation – and then, bizarrely, it actually feels that working in the
confines of the frame makes the assembly feel ‘easier’ – at least in the sense
that everything is being held in place by the frame – of course you’re having
also having to work inside the confines of the frame which makes things a
little fiddlier... outside the frame, there's a killer step in the middle of the assembly where you end up trying to mate two halves while keeping everything lined up properly - remember those fine tolerances?!

Lovely little puzzle – in the classic Eric Fuller-style of
lovely wood at an enjoyable size – tolerances are perfect and it’s an absolute
joy to play around with.